A county on Long Island, N.Y., is making greater than 100 services off limits to athletic organizations that permit transgender women and girls to compete on groups that match their gender id, staking out a place within the nationwide debate over how and when transgender athletes can take part in ladies’s sports activities.

Bruce Blakeman, the Nassau County govt and a Republican, signed an govt order on Thursday requiring any sports activities league or group that wishes to make use of a county parks division facility to “expressly designate” its groups as male, feminine or coed based mostly on members’ assigned intercourse at delivery.

The coverage takes impact instantly and doesn’t require legislative approval. Both the New York legal professional common and the New York chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union stated the ban was unlawful and that they have been reviewing their choices.

The transfer was the newest in a sequence of efforts by officers throughout the nation to bar transgender athletes from competing on groups that match their gender id, notably in women’ and girls’s sports activities. In the previous a number of years, greater than 20 states have handed legal guidelines proscribing transgender athletes from taking part in faculty sports activities on groups that don’t match the intercourse they have been assigned at delivery, according to ESPN.

And final yr, the House of Representatives, which is managed by Republicans, accepted a invoice that would bar transgender women and girls from competing in women’s sports. The invoice has no likelihood of passing the Senate, which is managed by Democrats, or being signed by President Biden.

According to Mr. Blakeman’s workplace, the chief motion signed on Thursday, which doesn’t limit transgender boys and males from competing on boys’ and males’s groups, will have an effect on hundreds of groups throughout all ranges that compete at Nassau County services.

Last yr, the Big East Conference, dwelling to 11 faculty athletics applications, held its swimming championship within the county. A spokesperson for the Big East stated the championship can be in Indianapolis this yr and that no determination had been made about future occasions.

Backlash to the order was swift.

“This discriminatory move not only undermines the principles of inclusivity and fairness but also perpetuates harmful stereotypes and exclusion,” stated David Kilmnick, the president of the L.G.B.T. Network, a nonprofit group based mostly on Long Island and in Queens.

“New York State law explicitly protects the rights of transgender individuals, ensuring their equal participation in all aspects of life, including sports,” he added. “Attempting to enforce such a ban would be futile and legally untenable.”

Letitia James, the New York legal professional common, known as the order “transphobic” and “deeply dangerous.” Bobby Hodgson, the director of L.G.B.T.Q. Rights Litigation on the New York chapter of the A.C.L.U., stated in an announcement that the group would “consider all options to stop it.”

Jami Taylor, a political science professor on the University of Toledo and an knowledgeable on L.G.B.T. politics, stated in an interview that Mr. Blakeman had ignored each state regulation and a precedent set by the state Supreme Court in signing the order.

According to New York human rights regulation, gender id and expression is a protected class in “all areas of jurisdiction, including employment, places of public accommodation, public and private housing, educational institutions and credit.” Ms. Taylor stated county sports activities services can be thought of locations of public lodging.

“What this is, is an attempt broadly by Republicans nationally to focus on the transgender rights issue in an election season,” Ms. Taylor stated. “It’s really just a culture war issue that they feel is advantageous.”

The New York Supreme Court dominated in Richards v. United States Tennis Association in 1977 that Renée Richards, one of many first brazenly transgender skilled athletes, might compete within the ladies’s draw on the U.S. Open, rejecting the tennis affiliation’s requirement for Ms. Richards to move a intercourse chromatin check.

“As early as 1977, it was recognized by a New York court that sex discrimination claims under the Human Rights Law may be brought by individuals alleging discrimination because of their gender identity,” the New York state steerage on gender id protections reads.

Assemblywoman Gina Sillitti, a Democrat representing elements of Nassau County, stated that Mr. Blakeman had signed the order to attain political factors.

“He is issuing an unnecessary executive order to grab headlines that I fear could lead to a culture of hate towards transgender children,” Ms. Sillitti stated. “Words matter. Far too often, hateful rhetoric leads to hateful action.”

The govt order was introduced at a time of accelerating threats and harassment towards transgender and nonbinary folks, particularly kids, with bans on athletic actions and loo utilization persevering with to realize traction.

Nex Benedict, a 16-year-old who used they/them pronouns, died this week in a small Oklahoma city exterior Tulsa after a confrontation in their high school’s girls bathroom.

Earlier this month, in Utah, a college district needed to enlist police safety for a highschool woman’s basketball participant whom a member of the varsity board had claimed was transgender.

Mr. Blakeman, a longtime fixture in Long Island politics, received the county govt’s workplace in 2021 with a marketing campaign closely opposed to mask mandates, necessities that had angered some suburban mother and father and companies, in addition to a give attention to crime and bail reform.

His win, a part of a wave of G.O.P. victories in Nassau that fall, catapulted Mr. Blakeman to hero standing in state Republican circles, with defiant appearances on Fox News solely burnishing that status.

But Nassau, with a inhabitants of about 1.4 million people, is much from a monolithic G.O.P. stronghold, with more registered Democrats than registered Republicans and practically 300,000 nonaffiliated voters.

That average disposition was proved final week with a win by Tom Suozzi, a Democrat, in a particular election within the Third Congressional District, the vast majority of which is in Nassau County.

Mr. Blakeman was joined at a information convention on Thursday by Kim Russell, a former ladies’s lacrosse coach at Oberlin College in Ohio who was removed from her position after publicly criticizing the inclusion of transgender women in women’s sports.

The audio system stood at a lectern flanked by school-aged women holding indicators that learn “Protect Women’s Sports.”

“I’m here, first and foremost, to support all of these young girls here,” stated Ms. Russell, who doesn’t dwell in Nassau County. “Without having the ability to have single-sex competition, these young girls could lose opportunities.”

When Mr. Blakeman was requested on the information convention what number of transgender athletes compete in Nassau County, he stated he didn’t know. He stated that lower than 1 p.c of the county’s residents recognized as transgender, with out citing a supply, and that he was unsure what number of, if any, competed at county services.

Instead, he referred to transgender women who competed on ladies’s groups exterior New York in his remarks, saying that he needed to “get ahead of the curve here in Nassau County.”

As Mr. Blakeman signed the order, a small group of protesters gathered exterior the county govt and legislative constructing the place the information convention passed off, chanting, “Trans kids are our kids.”

Juli Grey-Owens, the chief director of Gender Equality New York, a bunch that took half within the protest, stated that in Nassau and Suffolk Counties, which have a mixed inhabitants of round 2.9 million, there have been about 17,000 transgender folks.

The greater query, Ms. Grey-Owens stated, was what number of transgender athletes have been even concerned in native ladies’s and women’ sports activities.

“Every time that question is asked, they come back with no answer,” she stated. “Because they have a solution looking for a problem.”

Jesse McKinley contributed reporting.